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What's the Best Way to Recycle Old Tech in the US?
Tim Danhamn writes "SmartPlanet.com, a green-focused Web site, has put up an article about the best way to recycle your old tech, including local recycling centers and reusing old technology in other ways. I'm about to upgrade to a new PC and I have a lot of old radios, MP3 players and other electronic goods lying around the house. The article though is mostly about solutions in the UK, so I want to know - what is the best way to recycle old tech in the US?"
Was going to say "put Linux on it and repurpose", but you're talking about actual junk equipment that can't be salvaged in that way.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
what is the best way to recycle old tech in the US?
EBay.
Seriously, what better way to not trash something by getting what life (or parts) are left in it?
People get some good money for hardly working/not working tech on EBay just for parts alone. And hell, you may have no use for that old P350 but someone else on there just might. Why not let them have it for a few bucks+shipping?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Scarily enough, even "recyclers" may not be doing the right thing here. I've enclosed an interesting link from the NPR series "Consumed" which talks about how
the US sends vast electronic garbage to China, and how some of the materials may be finding their way back here, in a not-so good way.
link
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
One great way is just to give it away to anyone who wants it. Try this link to Freecycle, where there's a list of groups for areas within the US and around the world.
Send it to the UK
To find someone geekier than you are, that will gleefully take your used goods off your hands.
:bangs head:
Sadly I have boxes and boxes of accumulated crap...
Freegeek, in Portland, Oregon, is the best recycling option around. They recycle old monitors and equipment in an environmentally safe way. They use functional equipment to train people to work on hardware and install open source operating systems. Volunteers earn a refurbished system after volunteering 24 hours of time.
As much as I like recycling. There are collectors for EVERYTHING. Please do a minimum search, even on eBay to see if someone would like to buy your "junk" before you consider sending it to get recycled. I collect old DEC computers (PDP & VAX) and I've seen too many good old "classic" computers get recycled that lots of people would probably enjoy tinkering with. Old radios are probably the same. One mans junk is another mans collectable
TDz.
I put all my old junk in the trunk of my car and try to pass it off to unsuspecting passers-by in a target parking lot.
It'll be stolen soon enough, and within a couple of days it'll be sitting in front of a happy new owner who thought they got it for a bargain price.
I've shifted loads of old junk like this over the years. Cracks me up every time.
The mail lady is a particularly good collector of kids toys, and she has a nice big white van to load them into. Sure, beats the hell of dealing with morons on craigslist!
The small town I grew up in has a recycling facility for electronics, and similar proposals have been floated in the much larger city I now live. Really, I think that's the best way to go. I believe there are equipment-removal services that do recycling as well, but you generally have to pay for those directly.
Like
DVD / DVD rw drives are still useful in new systems.
Your old floppy drive will still work in your new system.
Older HD can go in to ext cases or be used as a temp / swap disk in new system as well.
Old mac G4 and G5 parts sell good on ebay like the cpus with HS, MB as well the PSU's and cases also DDR 1 ram is still used in many systems older but still in use systems.
High end sounds that a 1-2 years old are still better then todays on board sound.
Other pci cards that you used in the past likely will still work in your new system.
You use also reuse a old case and the fans from it in a new system as well.
Check out craigslist.org and see if there is a craigslist in your area. If so put it up for free. Some people will take completely broken equipment to scrap for the gold and other valuable recyclables.
While I am not trying to say this is the only or best means to recycle your goods, it is definitely a viable option.
Apparently the best way is to have the Chinese turn it into cadmium laced jewelry. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071116/NEWS01/711160345/1002/NEWS
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
" what is the best way to recycle old tech in the US?""
Give it to a pack rat. They'll pile it up with their other...treasures. Soon you'll read about the guy who couldn't get out of his house because the doors and windows were blocked.
Here in Portland Oregon you can donate it to free geek working or not. They test everything out using volunteer labor, and after 24 hours of volunteering people earn a free computer. They also can access the internet and learn about how to use a computer at the free geek lab. Find out more at http://freegeek.org/
Fairfax County, Virginia maintains a list of recyclers.
Donating it to a non-profit organization is a possibility. The one I volunteer for is very picky since we have funds to have up-to-date materials but many do not. Further, some have the volunteers to reimage them as basic web browsers for less fortunate families who receive them as handouts. Of course, it has to be working.
This idea falls into the "Local Charity Shops". The main targets are probably either very large churches, private schools, and maybe very small churches. Heck, even the local Animal Shelter might be able to use an extra system. And then you could write-off some nominal sum on your taxes too.
I have a process for getting rid of old crap. The nice thing is I usually break even (or so).
Step 1: Find a local hamfest. Hamfests are held all around the country. Keep an eye out for the bigger ones. There's one in my town once a year, and it's one of the bigger ones around. I nab a table for $10, load it up with old crap, and try to sell it cheap. Minus the cost of the table and gas, I usually make a hundred here. Don't get excited yet. You'll need that money.
Step 2: Find a local recycling program. It just so happens that the county I live in has a recycling facility, and since their focus is not making money as much as it is proper disposal, they're the cheaper option. What I don't sell at hamfest gets taken there. Usually I ring up a good size bill, so financed by option 1 is a good thing.
Step 3: Find food. With the $20 or so left over after all expenses are paid, go eat. Now you just emptied the basement, did so responsibly, and got pizza out of the deal.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
It would be a much more effective quesiton if it was less general than "old tech". What, specifically, are you looking to recycle?
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with them. We choose them solely because they guaranteed in writing that all of the IT waste would be processed in the US (not shipping to China) and that none of the IT waste would hit the landfill waste stream (everything is smelted down and recycled).
... Just bury it all, by far the easiest way. If you shrink wrap it, you can always dig it up later if you need it...
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I would say, donate them to charitable causes, give them to people who do not have them, garage sales, or sell to used computer stores, ebay, etc, people who dont have computers etc. Linux is great for older computers since it can still be run with older window managers and such that run well on older hardware. It is terrible to allow perfectly good computers that work fine except they are not the latest and greatest to end up in landfills. There ought to be a law against throwing away useable old electronics and such, both to keep them out of land fills for environmental purposes and for them to be used by others who might gain benefit from them.
...and maybe even usenet. And whatever similar sources you like.
The best recycling is always as close to original use as possible. Free stuff gets picked up pretty fast from craigslist in my experience (used to work for usenet, but the spammers and jerks ran everyone off). You can always put stiplations on it, which aren't binding, but at least encourage people.
I recently got rid of over 6 linear feet of technical books I no longer need this way, and several old computers. A geek picked the books up, and will sell or donate the ones he doesn't need (it was an all or nothing pickup). The computers went to a guy who reuses all the good parts to put together computers for himself, friends, whoever. I didn't even ask if he charges; I just needed them gone and he'll use them as much as possible.
Many old technological devices can be recycled into targets for practicing small arms fire.
People are talking about collectors for working stuff, but I have a rather remarkable pile of old Western Digital and DeathStar hard drives, all dead as doornails. All my Seagate drives are all still working, even the really old 1 Gb SCSI drives, so I learned my lesson there. I also have dead monitors, burned-out power supplies, etc. Nobody wants this crap! It's not good for anything!
The technology we bury in today's land fills will become buried treasure to archaeologists 1000 or 5000 years for now.
Just imaging discovering technology that is 5000 years old, especially if there is a world wide cataclysm and the technology is lost.
Many manufacturers out there offer trade in programs.
Benefit is twofold, often you can get a discount if your purchasing new equipment, and the your old junk gets recycled properly.
For example, HP Procurve offers a trade in program where you can trade in old network switches/hubs (does not matter what manufacturer) for discounts/cash back when purchasing new Procurve equipment.
Sony once upon a time had a program where you could get a great discount on a laptop if you traded in a competitors product (didn't matter how old it was).
No sig here...
Freecycle has already been mentioned elsewhere.
... on a new SUV!
People still use floppies?
1> Get a midevil catapul. ...
2> Put the catapult on the top of a tall building with your 'Old Tech' ammo.
3> Fire!!!!!!!
4>
5> Profit or get arrested!
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Living in a Cleveland suburb, I would have to say "Excellent idea, your Highness!" /Now the 300+ IT workers let go from Progressive have a future.
When I throw away electronics, this is what I do: First, I open the thing up, remove any and all useful components like motors, bearings, fans, PSU's, knobs, microswitches, LED's, CdS resistors, diodes, potentiometres, heatsinks, brass tubing, nylon, any clean metal sheet larger than a fingernail and anything else (even the wiring from transformers) that might be useful later on .
After this, I close it up (maybe throw in some other small stripped electronics like floppy drive shells) and take it to a recycling center.
Ok, there probably isn't much to recycle after stripping the it clean but at least I end up saving a few euros and the trips to the electronics store (the nearest of which is something like twenty kilometres away).
And yes, I'm a cheapskate.
Just throw it away, i.e. put it a properly sealed landfill. Someday someone will come along with a Plasma Gasification rig (google it) and distill it into its component materials safely and efficiently. Recycling is just a waste of time and money, whether its your time and money or someone else's.
Staples stores accept big stuff, like computers, for $10, and small stuff, like batteries and cell phones, for free. I've done this for a few months now. Check on the staples.com website.
trebuchet
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
when we had old things laying around (tech or otherwise) that didn't function anymore we would have a "physics project". Simply put this involves taking said object to a tall building or bridge and launching the object off of it while we observed the effect physics had on the object. It was quite scientific and was responsible for a vast majority of my learning in College. The other factor in my learning was filling beer bottles up with water to just the right point where if you slap your hand on it the bottom would fall out.
Donate your stuff.
Also, check out your city's or county's website. They may have local programs for recycling old hardware.
Oh, yeah, you could also donate all your stuff to me.... :)
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Whenever I have an older computer, I have pushed it down the stack. My computer goes to my wife and so on down until the bottom level pops out. That computer is usually given to the public school system. And I get a nice tax write off.
Unfortunately you sometimes may still need a floppy to flash a BIOS or install a driver during setup. Or to keep your drink from leaving a ring on the tabletop.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
I noticed you left NASA out of your list. They have some old tech that needs maintenance.
Some people take old electronics and make sculptures out of it. This lady makes moving animals out of old electronics junk. If I also recall there was a guy back in the early 2000's that made a life-size dinosaur sculpture out of old electronics gear...I couldn't find a link to it though, I think I saw it in Wired Mag. Apparently the point of the dinosaur was to represent how much electronics junk the average American consumed in their lifetime. I am sure there are plenty of other examples of such a thing.
I started a charity for this purpose.
If you have old equipment that you'd like to donate to a charity, we'll put linux on it (if it's a PC) and ship it to poor kids in a developing nation.
If you're interested, feel free to email me at zavPublic (at) mac (dot) com
The link below is our first shipment.
http://web.mac.com/zav/iWeb/Zav-O-Matic/Off%20to%20Africa.html
Cheers,
- Zav
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
DVD / DVD rw drives are still useful in new systems. Presuming your new (probably Serial-ATA) system supports the old (likely Parallel ATA) drives, possibly through your old PCI ATA controller card. Your old floppy drive will still work in your new system. Presuming your 2007-vintage motherboard still supports Floppy drives, and has a connector for them. Older HD can go in to ext cases or be used as a temp / swap disk in new system as well. again, presuming your new (probably Serial-ATA) system supports the old (likely Parallel ATA) drives, possibly through your old PCI ATA controller card.
The upcoming Nforce and ATI chipsets still have build ide unlike Intel with fores MB to use a 3rd party chip for ide.
Floppy drive ports are still on new boards.
Wierd Stuff Warehouse in Mountain View, CA offers free electronics recycling. If it works, they'll put it up for sale; if not, they'll scrap it properly.
Good place to get CRT monitors cheap, if you want one.
I have a Dell flat-panel monitor that's dead (screen doesn't work)...died 2-3 months after warranty expired. What can I do with it?
Anyone have any old LISP or Smalltalk machines, complete with software?
I like to put prepaid SIMs into old GSM phones I don't use, and leave them in the car and at home as backups or for visitors. But most SIMs still expire after a while, which seems like a scam to me (since the telcos don't refund their cost). CDMA phones do no good.
But I wish they could all be unlocked to use a low-power accesspoint in my home. The Bluetooth ones would be good as remote controls, if a Java or native applet could harness them.
--
make install -not war
Yes, there are some places where any bit of hardware would be welcome, but the greater majority of NPOs need decent (read 2-4 year old) PCs, not the dinosaur in the basement. We need to access many of those blasted Flash-based sites, and old hardware just won't cut it like it anymore.
If possible, donate to a third-party refurbisher like this. Read through this for ideas on what NPOs really need. If you do want to donate an old beast that "runs Linux just fine", I encourage you to donate your time to teach and keep the machine up, too. It's hard to break the MS Charity Licensing habit, but it can be done with your help.
Please do the responsible thing, and don't donate your old tech to avoid paying to have it recycled. We barely have money to buy new parts and equipment, we don't have enough to pay for recycling the old stuff so you don't have to.
IDWAANPO: I do work at a non-profit.
Several boxen might get infected with virii.
I would think that the systems they're talking about are older than this.
I for example, still have several monocrome monitors hanging around, quite a few 5.14" floppy drives, a number of old ISA cards (modems, video cards, MIDI synthesizers, etc), and gobs of old AT cases and power supplies. This stuff is largely trash, but I feel guilty throwing out anything that still technically works.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Take those old Pentium II, III, etc and put em inside old arcade video game cabinets. Then sell them as multi-game machines for hundreds of dollars.
Yes, because metal and high tech manufacturers mine the lead, chrome, etc out of your local soil and water supplies to build computers.
I send all of my old cell phones, MP3 Players, ink cartridges, digital cameras etc. to this non-profit that resells or recycles them and then donates the proceeds to the charity of your choice. http://recyclingforcharities.com/
It's pretty easy to do, you just go to their site, enter your donation, who you want it to benefit, print a shipping label and send it. It's a tax write off, it helps some good charities and I don't have all this old electronic stuff sitting around my house anymore. Beats throwing stuff away.
Post it on Digg?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I just found ouot about this program started over the summer by Dell & Goodwill in selected areas around the US - apparently, they strip down and sell off basic parts (plastic pellets, copper, etc.) as reclaimed commodities. I'm going to give it a try this week end (I want to get a car in the garage this winter ;^)
Ken
Link: www.reconnectpartnership.com
Ken
If you want to set up WinXP on a RAID array, you need to use a floppy disk, as the drivers are not contained on the CD. I think that SATA is the same way, but could be wrong. (I have SATA drives in a RAID array, only needed the one disk).
As a side note, it took a lot to find the floppy disk. I called BestBuy, and Future Shop (Canada only), Staples, and none of them had floppys. I had to go to my mom's house and scavange my old stuff. Out of a box of ~25 floppies, only 2 would sill format.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but when we process ore to get those materials (chrome, lead, etc.), they are pretty much never in that concentrated of a state in the environment. It's not that they don't exist in the environment, it's that they don't exist in high concentrations, or that they were previously locked in ore that groundwater wasn't being filtered through. Which is the main issue... heavy metals really fuck up kids, and to a lesser extent adults. So we don't really want them in the water supply. You're either a good troll, or slightly ignorant, in which case I hope I've aided in your edification :)
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
And my municipality distills its water from the local landfill?
My point is, the heavy metals could seep into water supplies already where they were. We mined them, used them, and are putting them back in ground. It's just a relocation effort.
Free geek will take any old hardware that you may have. There are a few of them around the world, one being closest to me being Free Geek Penn, www.freegeekpenn.org . Free geek is a beneficiary of some of the money from the linux visa card as well. I got a couple hundred hours of work down there, great place.
Holy crap!!
Glad you knew that lead was discovered and put to use during the computer age. And chromes were NOT used to treat leather, no siree, that's just our imagination!! Only in computers are these materials used. Nobody else ever used lead before high tech mining operations came into existence. Yep, it was a miracle discovery of the twentieth century. Hot damn, I better go find out what that grey metal stuff was that I keep shooting through my Brown Bess Musket replica!!! It definitely can't be lead. Gotta be some other metal, yep. And those evil historians, lying to me like that... the Romans couldn't have used lead, after all, they didn't have a computer industry. And how did they ever work that soft metal called lead, after all, it can only be used by "high tech environmentally irresponsible manufacturers", no way primitives who barely had iron and crude smelting capabilities could make use it! Oh wait, what's that? What? Lead was around before Iron? Wait, you mean... oh crap, so much for that theory.
Actually, I'm glad you noted my sarcasm in my earlier post.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Dump it from helicopters over old-growth forests.
If you live within a reasonable drive of FreeGeek, you could always drop off your old computer junk. If your computer is working and at least a Pentium II or a PowerPC Mac, they will install free software on it and give it to someone who can use it; otherwise they will responsibly recycle it. The headquarters is in Portland, OR but there are branches elsewhere.
http://freegeek.org/
Is there a FreeGeek branch near you?
Guidelines for what they will take
What they do with the stuff you give them
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I don't know what you're talking about. Sarcasm is fun. :-)
Actually that time I was enjoying myself in hefty doses of sarcasm, facts not withstanding. All I'm saying is this crap has been in the environment for a good bunch of time, before our great great grandparents were being conceived, and the world is just as screwed up now as it was then, everyone is STILL hoping for their preferred prophet to come back wielding a flaming sword or the environment to burst into flames and kill us all, so Al Gore and the UN can save us by taxing our "carbon output", but in the end, our bodies die anyways... a little every day. Why the fsck are we supposed to be worried about 10000 years from now, when the vast majorities cannot live their lives well enough to even justify living past today.
Saving the world should be important, but why is it worth doing when those who scream it the loudest cannot even save themselves?
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I was hoping to find out how to turn my old electronics into a bong... Dag.
Those old electronics units are full of lead! By now China is probably running out of lead to paint children's toys with! The scary part is that it's almost true.
Yes and no. I forgot that, recently, when upgrading an old machine for a friend, I had to flash the BIOS so it would see a 80Gb disk. On my machine though, I slipstreamed the RAID drivers into XP. Worked great.
http://www.recoveredenergy.com/d_plasma.html
:)
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_gasification
Figured I'd save others the Googling.
Here in Austin, Goodwill has a computer center that resells donated equipment. But, also, they've partnered with Dell to offer recycling of all computer electronics as well. So there's no need to separate the good from the bad. Give it all to the local Goodwill, and they'll put people to work learning how to test hardware and either bin it for safe recycling or put it up for resale and reuse.
I've taken the time to tape a "Good" or "Bad" sticker to the top of my electronics as I retire them, just because there are some things (like a motherboard with a north bridge that liked to lock up during 3d video rendering) that no tech is going to find, and I don't want that reused.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
...right up until the last line.
"...it's best if the computer runs Windows XP."
I hear they've figured out how to make USB drives bootable any more, and there's this nifty little program called FreeDOS, so really, there's no reason for a floppy drive any more.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The parts inside of these will become VERY valuable in the future. In particular, there is loads of gold in the old stuff, as well as copper. At this point, the copper is of medium price, but will go high down the road. By saving this off, we now have a high quality mine of material readily available. If nothing else, keep in mind that China is running around trying to corner the mineral markets. They have been trying to control as much copper and uranium as they can.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You have some nerve telling people about how science works after making such a stupid comment. Uranium, beryllium, and mercury come from the environment, too. I suppose you'd have no problem with someone dumping a load of them into your backyard, then?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
For those living near Seattle, Microsoft and Dell are taking back old PCs, monitors, printers, keyboards, mice, laptops, etc. this Saturday at Safeco Field.
Clean out the closet and basement. Microsoft, Dell and Intechra are offering free computer recycling from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Safeco Field's Safeco Parking Plaza at Edgar Martinez Way near Occidental Avenue South. To mark America Recycles Day, the collections event will accept any make or model of computers and related equipment, including computers, monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, mice and laptops. Gaming consoles and mobile entertainment devices also will be accepted. Electronic items not accepted include televisions, stereo equipment, cellphones and appliances.
Participants are asked to remove all data from their computer's hard drive and any removable media such as disks, PC cards, flash drives and CD-ROM's. Drop-off is free, and all equipment will be refurbished or recycled. The first 500 participants will receive free energy-saving, compact fluorescent light bulbs.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
They cross my property line without my permission, especially hauling hazmat, they don't come back out :) Trespassing is trespassing.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I love FreeGeek. Every big city should have something like them. If you're in the Portland area, you should check them out. They give two tours a day! They're a great place to volunteer at and they're full of interesting people. They do good work.
I just wanted to mention that there are Freegeeks in other cities...
http://www.freegeek.org/family.php
Yay FreeGeek!
-Tony
The Surplus Exchange http://www.surplusexchange.org/ Is a non-profit org that reuses & recycles electronics, office furniture, and supplies. If its still usable it will be reused, if not it will be environmentally recycled (none of that ship it off to china crap)... There are small fees for certain devices, monitors & the like, but anything usable is a tax-deductible charitable donation. While youre there check out the showroom, you never know what youll find there.
:)
And theyre really nice folks too
Yo, Dan being Clever is a poor excuse for being Smart and Thrifty! Better yet Being Clever is even a poorer excuse for speaking for others! There is at least a gajillion uses old working tech can be put to use. As an Educator You should be a bit embarrassed that the Public, and in this case a taxpaying-somtimes-levie-yes-voting-public is forced to rely on your cleverness, when what we are paying you to do is teach! How about teaching basic Computer skills on an old P2? Bet alot of us learned how to compile a few lines of code on older boxes. Or Key-boarding? or Finances? or Civic-Responsablility with public funds. And I haven't even touched the myrid of possabllitys the Scince department could put a dummy box to use. Annyhoo... I have a few students of my own to teach, right now so I think Todays lesson will be in about greatfullness, Thriftiness, Stewardship, Analitical reading, and how to spot a whiny-I-need-better-tools-so-I-can-look-at-cool-flash-websites-public-facillitators. oh and if there is a grammer geek that I've some how offended, I was Taught at a public school where the Clever Head of Education was too bussy griping about not having the right tools to educate the youth with. And the Answer is 3 x the 18th letter in the alphabet, just ask Jack Johnson! IAWATFAL: I actualy Work and Think For A Living
"Free Luna!"
We aren't allowed to recycle computers in the US. President Bill Gates is afraid we'll run Linux on them.
I rebuilt several dozen HP printers recently, and gave them away, or am using them myself.
1. Reuse anything that is still usable. An old HP Laserjet is still very usable, especially an old network printer when your sister and her family have a DSL line supplying internet to 5 PCs. I gave a bunch of old HP Color LaserJet printers to my family members, and set them up to run on networks.
2. If something is broken, it can still be used for parts. Many, many people earn their living by recycling broken HP LaserJets into working, refurbished HP LaserJets.
3. Read the manual that goes with the old bit of tech junk. You might be amazed at how upgradeable it is. I had a broken LaserJet 4000 printer that would not feed paper from Tray #2. I found a powered envelope feeder for $30 locally, and that put it back into service mailing notes to my students. Some RAM and a NIC scavenged from broken LaserJet 4500 printers (that donated toners, fusers, etc. to my family's Color LaserJets) brought the 4000 up to decent specs. An old PC can have massive amounts of RAM and storage added for under $100.
4. If everything else has been scavenged, then there is a cost to recycling the metal and plastic. you do not make money on that in today's market.
Andy Out!
If u have lots of old electronics that u want to recycle, head on over to your local Office Depot and purchase a Tech Recycling Box for $5-$15 depending on the size of box u want and fill it with everything u can. Take it back to Office Depot and they will ship it out to the recycling center for you. That's not too hard... yeah u have to pay a little bit for it but it's peace of mind knowing its not rotting in a dump somewhere.
Back to sticks and stones, digging industrial products out of landfills.
Sounds like a cool premise for some science fiction...
Blar.
Really, if you want to make hi-tech more environmentally friendly, just:
But that would require an honest, open, government-for-the-people EU, rather than the fourth Reich (Godwin, I kid, I kid!) it's becoming.
I took a three old laptop batteries to my local Radio Shack where they advertise free recycling for your old rechargeable batteries.
The guy behind the counter said, "That's fine, but if you really care about recycling, just know that if you leave them here, they'll go into the trash. I've never seen the battery recycle bin go anywhere else." I was astounded. I thanked him for his honesty and kept the batteries.
What's your experience with free recycling of batteries and the like at Radio Shack or other retailers?
I know you're trolling, but for anyone reading this and wondering;
The metals mentioned don't exist in nature*. Galena, Chromite, Cassiterite etc are ores which do exist in the environment and from which chrome, lead and tin etc are produced. They're relatively safe because they're locked in host rock and largely insoluble in water.
* Except crystalline lead in very rare circumstances.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Whenever posts one of these sorts of rants -- the world doesn't deserve to be saved, humanity is corrupt and should be wiped out, etc. -- I always wait for them (the poster) to put their money where their mouth is by volunteering to be first in line for the euthanasia chambers. Or to notify us of how they're going to off themselves in some other way, to speed things along.
Oddly enough, they never do, though. I wonder why that is?
Just about every motherboard I've seen still supports PATA, so it's not like it's an unusual situation - although it's annoying that most of them only support 2 devices.
There's a place in Warren, MI called Silicon Alley Recyclers that wipes, refurbs, and resells what they can. The rest gets responsibly recycled, I'm told.
Their thrift store is fun to browse, with piles of not-very-old machines, just off their corporate deployments. There are lots of laptops, a fair number of printers (including a beeeeautiful Phaser I've been drooling over), and monitors of every persuasion.
I know you're trolling, but I feel like I need to correct your ignorance before it infects other casual readers...
Your heavy metals go into the landfill, and no landfill is 100% leak proof for all of eternity. The metals seep into the groundwater below said landfill. This water flows into the main water sources of the area, where your municipality DOES get it's water. This is a middle-school level physical science concept.
I got nothin'
Well, no one is saying they want to end THEIR time here early....
TO paraphrase Jim Morrison: "I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames...alright!!"
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Seriously.
Ebay.
I get a lot of perfectly good RAM chips laying around, they are removed from computers when upgrading but they are virtually useless afterwards as I usually buy the base RAM for a system so it's merely redundant if I have more of the same lower capacity.
Case in point; at Work I am upgrading some Mac Minis which have 2x256MB SO-DIMMS I would like to use them (512MB would be a great upgrade in other computers) but they only work in certain computers, and I don't know which or can't get adapter to utilize them in ones that could benefit the most.
I guess what I'm getting to is I wish RAMs were more interchangeable, most other computer components are, but most high capacity RAMS are limited by what they can be plugged into.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
http://cellphonesforsoldiers.com/ accepts donations of old cellphones. They say they recycle them and then they use the proceeds to buy calling cards for soldiers overseas. It's not clear to me though whether the phone has to work or not, if they're going to "recycle" it. I got a prepaid mailer for them in the box with an order from Amazon.
Also, I've heard of organizations that take cellphones and give them to abused women or other people, to have just to be able to call 911 in an emergency.
It's not a remake - code was released and fixed up AFAIK.
A long, long time ago, I actually worked at that Progressive place in Mayfield, I think. The managers there are a bunch of thuggish, halfwitted and dishonest assholes that just loved to lord power all over people. The whole corporate culture was a crock of shit. I will never, ever, own Progressive insurance of any kind, as long as I live.
People that think that Halliburton is evil have never worked for Progressive.
This is my sig.
Copper is "relatively" cheap right now. But we are approaching the time where it will not be. Copper is limited. A recent study was done about this and like oil, they found that nations are using it up FAST. So, if we keep our waste it in a dump where we can access it relatively quickly, AND somebody develops the tech to cheaply seperate the components (and they will), then we will have a nice "mine".
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Mp3 players and PC's are not 'old tech'.
Geesh todays kids and their throwaway mentality.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
10-yard completion to the casual reader... first down
A shame you're not in Australia. I've been looking for a 5 1/4" floppy drive to resurrect some material I have on 5 1/4" discs. Or at least to see if they can be resurrected, which, I admit is not a given after 10+ years.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Two devices? surely with two sockets (and most of the recent motherboards I've seen still have two) you can support four devices. Just don't expect to RAID them all usefully.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
When I looked in the UK, most of the ones I saw only had one PATA socket, though I managed to pick up one with two sockets, so sure they exist. Either way, I haven't seen any that were SATA only, as the OP suggested...
Offer it on Craigslist for free or stupid cheap, immediately .
Don't put it in the garage, don't think "Maybe I'll put Linux on that" or "It'll be good to have for parts and backup" Just DITCH it.
The half-life of electronics is so short that just putting it aside for a month makes it worthless. Try giving away the 16MB flash memory that came with your phone or camera, you can't. Your old printer won't be supported soon. The software you didn't need becomes software no one wants.
The act of writing "You can come by this weekend to pick it up" forces you to back up the data, find the box, and get it ready. If you put it off, you're trashing your old tech.
=S
The USA has the grand canyon, must be one of the best naturally occurring places to use for land fill.
Check the CNN story on 18Nov07! It appears unscrupulous Chinese 'businessmen' are using front organizations disguised as American businesses to mask a huge and very lucrative sales operation. What they do is take advantage of American's urge to have spring and fall cleanings and to 'recycle', supposedly for 'ecology'. What happens is that these firms hang out the 'open for business' sign in relevant publications that local small town municipalities, businesses, charitable groups, and churches might read. Or they may even contact them directly. There are ways to obtain the phone numbers and addresses of all kinds of these potential customers. There is a subscription monopoly that was once a number of information providers that put out collections of CD's with all the numbers and addresses of all persons and businesses in the United States; and did so by using the supposed free and taxpayer funded T.I.G.E.R. database. And that is only one way. Your number is out there; and even though you cannot practically and economically obtain it, businesses of all kinds can, do, and pass its cost into its accounting system. Having done this, charities and church groups of all kinds end up using these Chinese front organizations to dispose of e-waste collected by well meaning workers from equally well meaning and foolish donors. The charities and church and municipal and other organizations use these crooks because these outfits have a competitive advantage over all others who might bid for the jobs...they can use virtual slave labor!! No American outfit can legally do so, as this is against the law here. The Chinese from organizations are protected by free trade agreements and the WTO, and basically do much of their dirty work in China. Those electronics that are 'donated' or 'disposed of' really have some value. The Chinese suede shoe outfits know this, and sort the 'junk' into working units and junk. The coolie labor the does the sorting often little knows the difference and really cannot test much beyond plugging it in and turning it on...if it does not smoke and spark and flash fire it is probably 'good'. The goods are then shipped in separate shipping containers to China. Perhaps it is poetic justice that the article in CNN waxed about risk to the Chinese environment by our 'exportation' of 'hazardous waste'. It is a fact that this 'waste' was collected as an organized deception from innocent Americans by the Chinese themselves. How ironic that this stuff really originated from China and exported to us! The major company labels that are on just about all of it were really exploiters that abused Al Gore's intellectual property laws to become the modern day equivalent of absentee landlords that live off the fat of the land as tapeworms sucking the life from society both Chinese and American. These monopolies used the IP laws to maintain ethically and morally illegal exclusive production by slave labor in totalitarian countries like China and Viet-Nam and others. Americans who would dare to try to produce competing products faced not only prohibitively low slave labor enabled prices, but also exclusive marketing arrangements among cabals of American marketing consortiums not to mention being enjoined by the courts from producing at all because to produce anything was to utilize existing 'IP production prohibited' technology or the 'look and feel' of that technology. So the Chinese that CNN was 'sympathizing' with not only are using 'hammers and chisels' to break up the waste product, but probably also were the same slaves and zombies that made the stuff in the first place. By the way, China is much more modern now, and the idea of hammers and chisels is probably a bit of a disinformation program. The idea that the Chinese do not want this stuff back is probably valid, as the presence of their hazardous export here is not only beneficial to China, but also proof of the pseudo intellectual foolishness and immorality of American 'upper class' society; and also of the seeds of failure that it contains within itself.
This is surely not the first such article of its kind, and likely what the OP is afraid of happening if he gives or pays-to-take some his ewaste to some Random E-reycler:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/18/electronics.trash.ap/index.html
Tag lost or not installed.
For anyone in the Tallahassee, FL area in the freecycle local chapter: CALL THE DAMN ADMINISTRATOR AND GET MY MEMBERSHIP APPROVED! I can put quotes in my posts too. -Me
A whopping 120 characters to take your mind off topic. Tested in MS Word.
Did you know that one of the GRIP projects (atmosphere sampling from gas pockets trapprd in Greenland ice and snow) also picks up the consequences of atmospheric dust. So the major volcanic events get picked out quite nicely. As well as a nice, broad peak of lead pollution from the Roman era which wasn't matched again until the Industrial revolution was well under way.
Of course, unlike us, the Romans do have the excuse that they didn't realise that they were shitting on their own doorsteps to a significant degree.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
These guys really break everything down, which is cool, and separate out the lead from the rest of the CRT.
http://www.eworldrecyclers.com/